ALPS Touchpad Clicking/Releasing [SOLVED]

[SiF]

I've got a rather strange problem with the ALPS Touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 6000. The synaptics driver loads fine using evdev using the following configuration

[n6il]

I am noting the exact same behavior wrt mouse clicks on the synaptics touchpad on my Compaq R3240 laptop.

It appears that (looking in xev) about 50% of the time, the button press is not registered, and the button release is registered as a button press instead, requiring a second button press or a mouse move to register the button release event. It is annoying enough that I am going to have to tote an external mouse along with my laptop until this problem is fixed.

By the way, I had this problem with synaptics 0.14.2 as well as 0.14.3. I did see this problem on kernel 2.6.12-r10, but I only noticed it some of the time. I continue to see it on 2.6.13-r5 and around 50-75% of the mouse clicks now require a second click or mouse move.

It is commonly suggested to reduce the acpi battery polling time - this has absolutely no effect on my system.

[SiF]

If my problem is the same as yours, I don't think it's hardware related; try just using the standard mouse driver with the pad and see if the buttons and taps work correctly, they do here (though movement is horrible and scrolling doesn't work). Further, the event debugging kernel module does show clicks releasing correctly, so I can't see the problem is with evdev.

As a result I think it's got to be the synaptics driver. Although it puzzles me that hardly anyone else with a Dell Inspiron 6000 is experiencing this problem. I've noticed a new version of synaptics has just been released (6 Nov), so I'll try that.

-Si.

[SiF]

I've just tried turning off acpi via acpi=off and now the the mouse is working (almost) perfectly. Further X startup is a lot faster and the 2D graphics are normal (they were sluggish before).

I've tried disabling everything that relies on ACPI with acpi=on, but the mouse problems still persist. I've also tried pci=noacpi, but to no avail. It definately looks like ACPI is doing something odd to my hardware (graphics as well as mouse). But I can't tell what.

You mentioned that ACPI Battery polling can be reduced; I've tried removing the battery module but it has no effect, what do I need to do to reduce polling?

-Si.

[SiF]

Ok, I've hit the problem - it's the processor module. Unloading this causes all the mouse problems (and display problems) to disappear. Unfortunately this means goodbye to speedstep and suspend for the time being, but it's better than no ACPI at all I guess.

NOTE1: Actually it isn't as bad as that, if I load processor with max_cstate=1, the problem also disappears. As I'm unfamiliar with the C-States though, I'm unsure of the reprecussions of this. With max_cstate=2 or higher the problem persists. Thus the problem seems to be when the processor is in a higher C-State than 1.

Anyone else had problems with the ACPI processor module?

-Si.

[willkil]

I have been experiencing the click issue for a while (weeks), but just started looking into it. I am unloading the processor module and will report how this works out for me.

[willkil]

Removing the processor module had no effect for me. I still experienced the sticky click. I was unable to test the click behavior with acpi=off because X didn't load with acpi=off.

My hardware is a synaptics touchpad, not alps, on a Dell Inspiron 2600. Because we are experiencing this with different hardware, I agree that it is likely a software issue.

Will

[fcgreg]

FYI: I've also been experiencing such a "sticky-click" for a while now (not sure how long). I have an Alps touchpad on an HP Pavilion zv5000.

When it happens on mine I've gotten used to doing a slight pointer "flick" to make the click event finish registering. This works every time and doesn't bother me too much, except that it was very confusing when it first started happening -- I wasn't sure what was going on.

I'll be following this thread for any future info that comes out. Thanks for posting!
_________________
Greg T.

[hanj]

Hello

I just wanted to chime in and say I'm experiencing some problems as well. Not with the click sticking but with the mouse freezing...

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-399683-highlight-synaptics.html

I'm curious if these problems are related.

Dell Inspiron 8500
AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint

thanks!
hanji

[SiF]

It turned out to be SMP that was the problem, it was enabled in the kernel and as soon as I disabled it, everything starting working smoothly with all C-States.

Thanks,

-Si.